


Smells like blood, tastes like fear, sounds like betrayal

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Echo Positivity Week [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Echo Appreciation Week, Fear, Fighting Back, Gen, Guilt, Mount Weather, POV Echo, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-05 17:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Echo was the best spy in Azgeda, but something falling from the sky could distract anyone. If she had just been paying attention, maybe she would have seen the Mountain Men.





	Smells like blood, tastes like fear, sounds like betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> Echo Positivity Week Day 2!  
> Prompt: Pre Canon!
> 
> Echo getting captured by the mountain men.

“Find me the trishanakru scout who stole from me.” Nia commanded.

Echo knelt on one knee, her head bowed, and then she stood, and turned, to do her duty to her queen.

She made her way to the trishanakru village where the scout had come from, blending into the background of the world, like she had been taught. She listened, and waited, and heard his name.

He had gone to polis, to bring his stolen goods to Lexa kom Trikru, Heda of the 12 clans. No doubt to try to find a way to get Azgeda removed from the coalition.

Nia had not told her what had been stolen from her, but she had no doubt it involved some plan to try and over throw Lexa.

Ontari’s face flashed in her mind. A full grown natblida, hidden away. A conclave between Ontari and the noviciates in Polis would be no contest. Ontari was a fierce and brutal warrior, and the noviciates were just children.

An Azgeda Commander hadn’t been seen in 7 conclaves.

If Nia wanted power, killing Lexa and presenting Ontari would get her that. A heda that she could control.

She rode towards Polis, stopping in every village along the way to find him.

When she made it into Trikru territory, she slept in high trees and rode only at night.

She may not have scars on her face like the Azgeda soldiers, but the white fur on her coat would be telling enough here, amongst the green and brown, amongst the trees.

She had made her way almost all the way to Polis when a loud sound made her turn her head towards the blue sky.

A huge object, made of metal, surrounded by fire, was falling to earth from the sky.

She had seen rocks fall before, but nothing like this. Nothing this size, and certainly nothing made of metal.

It slammed to earth, shaking the tree she was perched in, and she could see trees falling away from the sides of the giant object.

Her interest was peaked.

She leapt through the trees towards the huge object, stopped far enough back to see it, but to stay unseen by whatever may come from it. Her curiosity did not disappoint.

A huge door opened, lowering down to the ground like a bridge, and out stepped _people_.

Human beings, young, probably not even adults except maybe few. A girl, brown hair and wearing some blue thing, stepped cautiously towards the end of the bridge, and then jumped onto the earth below her feet.

She was silent for a few seconds, taking deep breaths, and she she screamed into the air some joyful cheer, and the rest of the people… the _people who had fallen from the sky_ , came rushing out, yelling and cheering, hollering and screaming and full of pure joy. She watched as some man, a bit older than the rest, wrapped his arms around the first girl, holding her close for a second, before he wandered off to see the world.

She watched as a blonde girl and a boy with dark skin leaned over what she assumed was a map.

She watched as they started to fight, to fuck, to play, to dance.

She stayed in the tree well into the night, watching as people who had never seen the earth revelled in her beauty.

The night came, and she climbed down from the tree, and headed off back towards Azgeda, to share her findings with the Queen.

She made it only about an hour before she remembered her true mission, and turned her horse around heading back to Polis.

She only made it until dawn was starting to crawl over the horizon, though.

A sharp pain hit her in the neck, causing her to fall from her horse. She pulled out a small dart, with red feathers on the ends, and she felt her heart stop.

 _Maunon_.

How had she not heard them coming.

She had been distracted, thinking about these new people from the sky.

_Skaikru. Veida kom skai._

She tried to stand, tried to crawl back onto the horse, but her body was weakening by the second, her vision fuzzy, and her limbs out of her control. She fell to the ground, gasping for air as her breathing slowed beyond her control.

The last thing she was before her vision went black was the thick plastic suits of the Mountain Men, two of them leaning over her, tying her hands together. She felt herself be lifted from the ground, and she drifted into unconsciousness.

She fought her way back too the land of the living with as much ferocity as she could, but she was already in the reaper tunnels by the time she was awake, being carried on some kind bed like carrier, with heavy poles on either side and some sort of clothe stretched between them, her hands and feet tied to the edges of it. She stayed quiet, even while fear took the place of blood in her veins.

No one ever made it out alive after being taken from the mountain.

She remembered an Azgeda soldier who came back into their village, but he was different. Monstrous. The first reaper she had ever seen.

He had been killed by his own friends.

She wasn’t sure it had even really been him anymore.

She wondered if that was her fate. Monstrous.

They lifted her and hit her, hard. Probably trying to pull her back into consciousness. She had been pretending to well.

They pushed her too her knees, in a line of others. She looked down the line, but there was no face she knew there.

They had taken all of her heavy duty clothes, and she was in nothing but her thin pants and light t-shirt.

Some woman, in a big suit, dark skin and dark hair, came up, grabbing each of them by the chin, studying them.

**Harvest.**

**Harvest.**

**Cerberus Program.** A huge man, with Podakru markings on his neck, who was snarling and growling and fighting back. He would be a reaper. That was how they decided. She looked down at her own body, as if she was trying to make sure that her own frame wouldn’t be threatening enough to make that her fate.

**Harvest.**

The woman stood in front of her, grabbing her chin in the rough rubber of her gloves. She itched to reach for her knife and slice through the plastic, but she knew it was gone.

She let her head be turned, back and forth. She let her eyelids be pulled up and back. She let her mouth be opened and peered into, a thumb over her bottom teeth. She made herself hold still, fighting the urge to bite off her fingers.

Be non threatening.

Nothing they do to you inside that mountain could be worse than being turned into a monster.

**Harvest.**

A rushing sound took over her ears, and she didn’t hear what would be the fate of the rest of them. Not that it mattered. Death or Reaping. None of them would come back from this place. She took deep breaths of the air, even stale in the tunnels, and leaned forward just a little to grab handful of the dirt from the ground.

This was the last time she would be outside.

They forced her to drop it before she went through the doors. Something about contamination.

Not that she expected a creature comfort from these monsters.

She was led through a large room, the doors slamming, loud behind her. There was a loud hum of machinery all around her.

She was stripped down, left in nothing but heavy metal cuffs and a heavy metal collar around her neck, and clinically picked over by a man in a suit, turning her and lifting her arms, peering over her naked skin like she was an animal ready for slaughter.

She felt sick.

She was washed, by burning water, unforgivingly painful pressure, all over her skin. Scrubbed by brushes on long sticks, as if the idea of scrubbing her with their hands was beneath them. Like she was a floor to be cleaned.

Wrapped in thin white material, around her breasts and her butt, and her pubic mound.

Led in a straight line through the halls of the mountain, and into a room full of cages.

Full of her people.

Her heart was in her throat alongside the vomit.

Hundreds of her people, wrapped in white, trapped in cages.

They rounded a corner, and she saw two of them.

An azgeda soldier and a trikru warrior.

Strapped from the ceiling, upside down, with tubes coming from their bodies, red.

Blood.

They were taking their blood.

She heaved, but kept her mouth closed, swallowing back down the vomit.

They led them in, one by one dropping them into empty cages.

The girl behind her, a small girl who had the braids of sangedakru, reached forward and grabbed her hand. No doubt out of fear. She held on for dear life. They pulled the girl from her grasp, and Echo heard herself yell for her.

“ _En’s ku, sangeda sis, en’s ku.”_

She finally found a fight. This girl, young, probably no older than 16, had reminded her to fight.

She kicked her legs out, knocking down one of the mountain men, his head hitting the ground so hard he was knocked unconscious. She jumped up, wrapping her chained wrists around the other’s neck, and pulling so hard she heard his his spine snap. She untangled herself from him, and lunged at towards the next guard who came running in.

Her people, in these cages, were screaming and hollering, rattling the cages and cheering her on.

Her fight didn’t last long. Another dart hit her in the shoulder, and then another in the stomach, and another in the thigh.

Cover all their basis. Smart.

The world went fuzzy much faster this time, but before she fell to the ground, she looked the man who had shot her in the eye, stepped back, and stomped her heel into the unconscious mountain mans neck, crushing his wind pipe, killing him.

She’d be damned if she was going to let them take her down without taking out as many of them as she could.

She woke up in her own cage.

She sat up, grasping at the wiring of these new walls that would hold her.

The woman next to her reached out, wrapping her fingers around Echo’s hand.

“ _Yu gonplei gon osir, plangona. Osir mochof. Yu laik oso yontsleya.”_

She nodded to the woman.

“ _Mochof. Chit clan laik yu?”_

_“Ai laik Betana kom Delfikru. En yu?”_

_“Ai laik Echo kom Azgeda.”_

Betana squeezed her fingers, and smiled.

“ _Echo kom Azgeda, yontsleya kom a honon. Osir mema yu.”_

She looked out over the room, full of her people, in blue light, trapped.

She wondered who would even be alive to remember her bravery.

The days passed, long and slow. Betana was taken a few days after she arrived, drained of her blood. She had told her before that she had already been bled twice. She died, hanging upside down in a room, like an animal being slaughtered.

“ _Yu gonplei ste udon, Betana kom Delphikru._ ” She whispered as they threw her body into a chute leading to nowhere.

The days passed still, the people around her being drained of their blood.

The first time they came for her she tried to fight, but they touched her with a long stick, crackling with energy, and it burned through her whole body.

She hung there, upside down, watching her blood run through the tubes, and then they detached her, and put her back.

It happened another time, a week or so later.

She had tried to keep track of the days. She would say it had probably been almost 5 weeks since she had been taken.

One day, a man was thrown into the cage by her side. She barely even looked up, she had stopped trying to know them, because they all just kept dying.

But then he spoke.

 _Skaikru_.

She had been in long enough, that she had heard stories of their violence against her people.

She spit in his face, and almost instantly regretted it. Her mouth was already so dry.

He was angry. He told her of the alliance between skaikru and the coalition, to take down the mountain.

His people were inside too.

He saved her, fighting against the cage when they came for her so they could take him instead.

A girl from the mountain let him down.

He fought off a guard, and when he flung him up against the cage she grabbed his hand, holding him back to this warrior could kill him.

“Thank you” he whispered, barely audible over the raucous in the room.

She recognised him. The older man, who had held the first girl to touch the earth close to him. She said nothing.

He promised her he’d come back for her, and then dressed as a mountain man, he headed into the belly of the beast.

A spy.

She waited.

For four days she waited.

The mountain men still came, but they took others.

And then he came back.

She didn’t think anyone had ever come back for her before.

He freed her from the cage, and helped her free the others, and then went back into the mountain.

He told her to wait for him.

And then the mountain man came, and told them a deal had been made. She was led from the mountain into the cold night air, but she was not met with the strong skaikru boy. She was met with disgrace.

Lexa led them away as skaikru stood. She understood instantly.

She had left him behind. He would come back, and she would not be there.

He had saved her.

And she had betrayed him.


End file.
